Journey from Enchantment to Disenchantment?a Study on Darwin’s Descriptions of Nature from the Journal to the Origin

  1. Jiménez Pazos, Bárbara
Journal:
Daimon: revista internacional de filosofía

ISSN: 1130-0507 1989-4651

Year of publication: 2021

Issue: 83

Pages: 71-87

Type: Article

DOI: 10.6018/DAIMON.363291 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDIGITUM editor

More publications in: Daimon: revista internacional de filosofía

Abstract

Taking into accountthe disputed question about enchantment or disenchantment of the world caused by modern science, this paper comparatively examines the semantics of the lexicon of Charles Darwin’s Journal of Researches and The Origin of Species using the software package Wordsmith Tools. Its aim is to show that there is a direct semantic path, starting with the Journaland culminating in the Origin, which confirms a tendency towards a gradually disenchanting, in a non-pejorative sense, type of language used by Darwin in his descriptions of nature. This is demonstrated by the lexical and semantic analysis of the texts.

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